Seneca County Stats

Past Five Years:

604 jobs created2,740 retained

incentives

New York State and Seneca County offer business incentives to encourage investments that drive business growth and job creation. The incentives are available individually, or bundled as part of a comprehensive program, such as the Empire Zone Program. All government incentive programs are aimed at helping companies retain jobs by enhancing their operating effectiveness, or to create new jobs through business growth and expansion.

Energy

Brownfield / Building Redevelopment Program Location: Seneca County Category: NYSEG Audience: Mid- to Large-Sized Business Details: Up to $500,000, on a per-project basis, to encourage the redevelopment of a brownfield site or vacant building. Funds are to be used for electric-related infrastructure improvements and may not be used for the remediation of the site.

Small Commercial Energy Audit Program Location: Seneca County Category: NYSERDA Audience: Small Businesses / NFPsDetails: Free energy assessments are available to small businesses and not-for-profits with an average electric demand of 100 kW or less.

FlexTech Program Location: Seneca County Category: NYSERDA Audience: Mid to Large-Sized Business Details: NYSERDA offers a range of flexible, cost-shared technical services to help you make good energy decisions for your business. Work with energy consultants to create a customized energy assessment that identifies your specific opportunities.

Utility Infrastructure Investment Program Location: Seneca County Category: NYSEG Audience: Mid to Large-Sized Business Details: If funding from other sources is inadequate, NYSEG may supplement, on a per project basis, new electric delivery related facilities, if a minimum of $1 million is invested in a new or expanded facility.

Business Energy Efficiency Assistance Program Location: Seneca County Category: NYSEGAudience: Small to Large-Sized Business Details: Additional funding assistance through NYSEG to cover 33 & 1/3 % of the cost of a FlexTech Study through NYSERDA. NYSEG will supply up to 50% matching funds, with a $10,000 max contribution for small businesses or up to $50,000 for large businesses, against the total investment made as a result of an energy audit.

New Construction Program Location: Seneca County Category: NYSERDAAudience: Small to Large-Sized Business Details: Provide assistance when incorporating energy-efficiency measures into the design, construction, and operation of new and substantially renovated buildings. Incentives are available for the purchase and installation of energy-efficient equipment that reduces electric energy consumption in new and substantially renovated buildings.

Industrial and Process Efficiency Program Location: Seneca County Category: NYSERDA Audience: Mid to Large Manufactures Details: Provides performance-based incentives to manufacturers and data centers implementing energy efficiency and process improvements which will reduce your costs. IPE's goal is to help manufacturers and data centers increase product output and data processing as efficiently as possible. Incentives are calculated, based on a reduction in energy usage per unit of production or workload.

Combined Heat & Power Program Location: Seneca County Category: NYSERDAAudience: Mid to Large sized Businesses Details: Incentives are available for CHP Systems with an aggregate nameplate greater than 1.3 MW that provide summer on-peak demand reduction. These incentives are performance-based and correspond to the summer-peak demand reduction (kW), energy generation (kWh), and fuel conversion efficiency (FCE) achieved by the CHP System on an annual basis over a two-year measurement and verification (M&V) period. CHP Systems of 1.3 MW and less should refer to the NYSERDA CHP Acceleration Program.

Grants

Environmental Investment Program Location: Seneca County Category: Grants Audience: Small- to Medium-Sized Business Details: Provides funding for capital investments, research, development and demonstration as well as technical assistance that produce measurable results in pollution prevention, reuse and recycling.

Global Export Market Service Location: Seneca County Category: Grants Audience: Small- to Medium-Sized Business Details: Helps businesses expand through increased export activities. Can provide up to $25,000 in export marketing consultant services for individual companies, and up to $50,000 for groups of companies or industry associations.

New York State's Manufacturing Extension Program Location: Seneca County Category: Grants Audience: Small- to Medium-Sized BusinessDetails: Grants of up to $60,000 to private consultants. They will identify, develop and implement improved management and production processes for businesses to expand market share and promote job growth or retention within New York State.

Loans

Genesee/Finger Lakes Regional Revolving Loan Fund Location: Seneca County Category: Loans Audience: Small- to Large-Sized Business Details: Purchase of machinery and/or equipment, rehabilitation of industrial property, purchase of industrial property and site development and expansion. Also has a companion loan fund that can finance working capital needs.

New York State Business Development Corporation Loan Program Location: Seneca County Category: Loans Audience: Small- to Medium-Sized Business Details: NYBDC is a complement to conventional banking, working in partnership with banks to provide term loans, many of which do not meet the requirements for traditional financing. Our goal is to be more creative in our underwriting. In many cases, we include multiple participations, SBA guarantees, flexible amortization and long-term payouts.

New York State Job Development Authority Direct Loan Program Location: Seneca County Category: Loans Audience: Small- to Large-Sized Business Details: Loans from $50,000 to $3.5 million to encourage businesses to expand, locate or modernize their facilities in New York State.

New York State Linked Deposit Program Location: Seneca County Category: Loans Audience: Small- to Medium-Sized Business Details: The program provides a two to three percentage points savings on the prevailing interest rate for "Linked Loans," to make borrowing less expensive. The maximum loan amount is $1,000,000 for four years.

Small Business Administration 504 Loan Program Location: Seneca County Category: Loans Audience: Small-Sized Business Details: Expansion projects that create/retain jobs, real estate projects or acquisition of machinery and equipment.

Small Business Administration 7A Loan Guarantee Program Location: Seneca County Category: Loans Audience: Small-Sized Business Details: Real estate, equipment, working capital and other business purposes.

Small Business Administration 7M Micro Loan Program Location: Seneca County Category: Loans Audience: Small-Sized Business Details: Provides short-term loans of up to $35,000 to small businesses and not-for-profit child-care centers for working capital or the purchase of inventory, supplies, furniture, fixtures, machinery and/or equipment.

Tax Abatement

New York State 485(b) Location: Seneca County Category: Tax Abatement Audience: Small- to Large-Sized Business Details: Partial exemption from the real property tax levied by counties, cities, towns, villages and/or school districts. The maximum exemption amounts to 50% of any increase in value in the first year following completion and declines by five percentage points in each of the succeeding nine years.

Sales Leaseback Agreements - Payment in Lieu of Taxes (P.I.L.O.T.) Program Location: Seneca County Category: Tax Abatement Audience: Small- to Large-Sized Business Details: The following benefits are available to companies who enter into a Sales Leaseback Agreement with an IDA.

Real Property Tax Abatement - Abatement of the real property tax for a designated period of time.

New York State Sales Tax Exemption - Sales tax exemptions on the purchases and costs associated with creating/retaining jobs. Examples: sales tax associated with contractor costs, business vehicles sales tax.

Tax Credits

Employment Incentive Credit Location: Seneca County Category: Tax Credits Audience: Small- to Large-Sized Business Details: An additional credit of 1% to 2% for the same new capital investment may be deductible from the tax payable in each of the next two years succeeding the year of the original investment.

New York State Investment Tax Credit Location: Seneca County Category: Tax Credits Audience: Small- to Large-Sized Business Details: The investment may qualify the business to receive up to a 10% tax credit on their investments.

New York State Research and Development Tax Credit Location: Seneca County Category: Tax Credits Audience: Small- to Large-Sized Business Details: Investments in research and development facilities are eligible for a 9% corporate tax credit. Additional credits are available to encourage the creation and expansion of emerging technology businesses, including a three-year job creation credit of $1,000 per employee and a capital credit for investments in emerging technologies.

New York State Excelsior Jobs ProgramLocation: Seneca County Category: Tax Credits Audience: Small- to Large-Sized Business Details: Firms in the Excelsior Jobs Program may qualify for four new, fully refundable tax credits. Businesses claim the credits over a 10 year period. To earn any of the following credits, firms must first meet and maintain the established job and investment thresholds outlined in Program Eligibility below:

Excelsior Jobs Tax Credit: A credit of 6.85 percent of wages per new job to cover a portion of the associated payroll cost.The Excelsior Investment Tax Credit: Valued at two percent of qualified investments.The Excelsior Research and Development Tax Credit: A credit of 50 percent of the Federal Research and Development credit up to three percent of research expenditures in NYS.The Excelsior Real Property Tax Credit: Available to firms locating in certain distressed areas (see Investment Zone list below) and to firms in targeted industries that meet higher employment and investment thresholds (Regionally Significant Project).

Workforce Development

New York State Training Grants Location: Seneca County Category: Workforce Development Audience: Small- to Large-Sized Business Details: Funding available for up to 50% percent of any training project, training in new technologies, skills or work processes, training in a classroom setting and/or on-the-job, funding for consortia projects, and funding for small business training projects.

Other Programs

Microenterprise Assistance Program Location: Seneca County Category: Other Programs Audience: Small-Sized Business Details: This program is intended to provide eligible participants with free training and technical assistance and access to low interest loans.

Entrepreneurship Training - This includes a 12-week training course which covers many of the aspects of operating a small business including: taxes, legal/business law, budgeting/financial statements/recordkeeping, computer applications and employee issues.

Technical Assistance and Business Plan Development - Technical consultants assist in the development of a business plan which will: outline the vision of the entrepreneur/owner, identify the market, detail the production and employment plan and identify financial needs and goals.